OPERATION ROSWELL

From the UFOlogist and investigator of alien abductions (co-author of The Abduction Enigma, 1999, etc.), a thinly fictionalized account of what UFOlogists and conspiracy theorists maintain occurred near Roswell, New Mexico, in June/July 1947. For months, unidentified flying objects had been reported near the nuclear testing grounds of White Sands. Radar confirmed the existence of objects that, apparently, were capable of rapid, abrupt maneuvers and prodigious acceleration. Finally, General Curtis LeMay orders his pilots to attempt to shoot one down. Amazingly—since the objects previously had proved invulnerable to ordinary weapons fire and were in any case able to flit out of danger in an instant—an object crashes in the desert near Roswell. Captain Jack Reed of army intelligence, ordered to investigate, inspects a craft approximately triangular in shape, smooth, with no wings or obvious propulsion system—and four dead humanoid aliens! Definitely not Russians, LeMay realizes. The damaged craft is composed of an enigmatic, plastic-like metal impervious to drilling, melting, or analysis. And—one of the aliens is alive! To prevent widespread panic, President Truman orders LeMay to hush the incident up. The media is solemnly shown a crashed weather balloon. Meanwhile, the craft and its occupants are taken to a secret subterranean base in Nevada for further study. LeMay arranges for a nuclear device to be installed on the premises, just in case. And then things really start to get weird.

Readable, even plausible, but not too much more. It's fiction, after all. Really it is.